


Apologies

by stuffandsundry



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Gen, spoilers for 9/17, you two idiots are gonna say sorry AND YOURE GONNA LIKE IT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 21:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10839993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stuffandsundry/pseuds/stuffandsundry
Summary: Nobody saw Ryuji say sorry to Morgana, even after all that happened. Doesn't mean that it never happened.





	Apologies

“I’m headed to the clinic. Go home without me.”

Morgana blinks awake as the soothing cadence of Akira’s footsteps stops. “Hmmm? Alright then. Don’t stay for too long, though, or you’ll have a hard time waking up tomorrow morning.”

Akira lowers his school bag to the floor, and Morgana jumps out. He pads his way down Yongen-Jaya’s now-familiar back streets without looking back. Akira always found the time to meet up with the strangest people, but it was still pretty boring for Morgana, considering everyone just thought that he was some kind of pet. It was much more convenient for both of them to just split ways, sometimes. And if he went straight back to Leblanc right now, then maybe Boss would let him have some curry for dinner? Mmmm, cur-

“Ah. Hey, Morgana.”

Startled from his musings, Morgana whirls around to see who was addressing him. His ears flatten back. “Oh. It’s you.”

Ryuji slouches there awkwardly, still in his school uniform. He’s got a convenience store bag slung over one wrist, and he’s rubbing the back of his head. “Akira around?”

“He’s at the clinic. Come back some other day.” Morgana turns and starts walking again, and stops again. Ryuji’s following him.

Morgana glares back at Ryuji and growls, “I _told_ you, Akira’s not here right now! What do you want?”

“Uh, yeah. Listen, I need to talk to you about something. Privately. Is there anywhere we can…” Ryuji looks at Morgana’s unimpressed posture and hastily changes the subject. “Hey, I got you some sushi. It’s just from the 777, but you never got to eat the leftovers last time Akira went out with the Sakuras, right?”

Morgana’s first instinct is still to walk away….but. This is _sushi_ they’re talking about here. Maybe he could just eat it and not listen to whatever that blonde idiot had to say? “Hmph. Fine, I guess. I know a place that should be pretty deserted at this time. Let’s go.”

He darts across the street, not caring if he’s going slow enough for Ryuji to follow.

“H-Hey! Wait up!”

A variety of curses follow Morgana as he jogs along, but be doesn’t look back.

* * *

There’s an empty lot a little less than ten minutes from the cafe. Morgana’s never mentioned it to Akira before, not that he thinks that he’d be interested in it. Akira’s always busy, and he probably wouldn’t be curious about anything that didn’t give him an advantage somewhere, somehow. Privately, Morgana thinks that if he wasn’t there to tell him to go to bed, his friend would just keep on going until he passed out in class or something.

Ryuji enters the lot, cursing as stumbles over some weeds to a halt. Morgana turns around and swishes his tail at him impatiently. “Well, we’re here. What are you waiting for?”

“Jeez, gimme a second, will ya? _Somebody’s_ impatient.” Ryuji take the plastic container out of the bag and takes the lid off, placing it on the ground. “Have at it, then.”

Morgana bounds over and takes a bite. The sushi is-- well. He makes a face. “Wow, this sushi isn’t that great. You couldn’t have gotten anything better?”

“What did you expect? I told ya that I got it from a convenience store. I’m not rollin’ in dough, you know.” Ryuji sits down next to Morgana. Morgana’s busy eating-- hey, shitty sushi is still sushi-- but he spares Ryuji a glance over his meal. Ryuji has a weird look on his face. It’s sort of uncomfortable and sort of thoughtful, maybe? Uncharitably, Morgana thinks that it kinda makes him look constipated. Thoughtfulness didn’t suit a brute like Ryuji, after all.

Morgana’s ears flick forwards as Ryuji starts to talk.“Hey… about all those things I said about you before...”

“Hey!” Morgana stops eating and crouches low to the ground, ears flat. “If you’re going to tell me how useless a stupid cat is again, I’m not sticking arou--”

“What? No! No, dude, wait, just let me-- I just--” Ryuji sighs and runs both of his hands through his hair.

“I’m...damn it, I’m sorry, alright? I know you’re not useless, and so does everyone else. You’re our only dedicated wind element fighter, and you’ve got all those healing moves, and you make going through Mementos way, _way_ easier with the bus thing. I don’t think me and Akira and Ann coulda gotten through that first Palace without you, you know? I guess I just-- nah, nevermind. The point is, I know I effed up, man. I’m sorry.”

Morgana just. Sits there, for a second. After that disastrous day… honestly, Morgana had kind of forgotten that he’d never gotten a proper apology from Ryuji. There had been way more important things to worry about, after all. So this, right here...it’s a real surprise.

“So… yeah. That’s really all I wanted to talk about? Guess I’ll be going now, then.” Ryuji stands up and brushes some dirt off his pants. His movement snaps Morgana out of his state of stunned bewilderment because _what the heck_.

“Hold upt!” Morgana bristles. “Is that all you’ve got to say?”

Ryuji stops, surprised. “Well.. yeah? Did you want anything else?”

“Why couldn’t you have said any of that before? Going on about useless this, useless that… It hurt, you know!” Morgana narrows his eyes in suspicion. “Wait a minute… did Akira put you up to this?”

“ _What?_ ” Ryuji yelps. “What the hell makes you say that?”

“Because you’re too much of an insensitive dolt to think of this all on your own!”

“Hold on a sec, just because-”

Morgana cuts him off. The more he thinks about it, the more he’s convinced that he’s right. “Of course somebody told you do apologize, I bet you don’t even get how you hurt my feelings in the first place! You don’t know what it feels like to be called useless like that!”

Ryuji is silent, and Morgana’s about to take that as proof of his point when-

“You… don’t think I know how it feels to be called useless.” Ryuji is looking at him incredulously.

Morgana blinks. Huh? The confusion in his face must be clear, because Ryuji scowls in frustration. “You _seriously_ don’t-- You know what, fine. _Fine!_ Okay! I wasn’t going to bring this up, but I guess we’re doing this now?” He takes a deep breath and continues in a mockingly high pitched voice. “Oh, Skull, you’re pathetic, wow look at that, Skull, I can’t believe you managed to kill one measly shadow by yourself, hey, maybe you aren’t utter trash like I thought!”

“...Wait, is that supposed to be- I didn’t say half those things!” Morgana retorts defensively.

“I’m exaggerating a little bit. Whatever! The point is, you were the one that started doing it! And you didn’t do it with anyone else- not Akira or Ann or Yusuke or Makoto, I’m the only one you called a dumbass all the time! I get it, okay! I’m not smart, all I’m good for is running and I can’t even do that anymore so I guess I’m really kinda useless, right? I’m the damn butt monkey of the team, and you were always rubbing it in my face and I hated it!”

“Damn it, I was really trying to apologize but now I’m pissed all over again!” Ryuji starts kicking at the ground in agitation. He presses his hands over his eyes. “Nobody ever said _you_ should stop calling me a dumb loser all the time! Ever! And I dunno, I guess it was something I thought I could ignore at first but you just _kept on doing it_ and none of the other guys ever said anything! But hey, _I_ say that you’re just a useless cat a couple of times and suddenly _I’m_ the bad guy? I just- Rrgh!” He punctuates his words with one last, violent kick. A few pebbles go flying across the road.

There’s a dead silence in the air after the _clatter clatter_ of the pebbles fades away. Neither of them will meet the other’s eyes.

Ryuji takes a shaky breath and clenches his fists. “Fuck this. I’m going home.” He walks past Morgana, and even when his foot catches on the plastic tray of sushi and it goes flying everywhere, he doesn’t stop walking. Morgana jumps a little, startled out of his blank shock.

“Ryuji? Ryuji, wait!”

But he doesn’t. An awful feeling rises up in Morgana’s chest like he just broke something precious. And he just knows that if he lets Ryuji walk away right now, he won’t get another chance to fix it.

“Wait! Ryuji, I…”

Ryuji doesn’t turn around. Desperate, Morgana dashes right in front of Ryuji’s legs so that he has no choice but to stop or risk hurting Morgana.

“Haven’t you had enough? What the hell else do you want from me?”

“Ryuji. I… I think… well, I mean…” Morgana’s scrambling for words. Ryuji’s still not looking at him, hurt and confused and Morgana thinks that he has to say _something just say something_.

“If you’re sorry, then… then I’m sorry too! I guess I never thought about how you were feeling either. It’s not fair of me to say something mean to you and expect you to be okay with it if I wasn’t when it happened to me. And I guess you hurt me, but I hurt you too! And I’m sorry!” Morgana hesitates for a second, and continues in a more quiet voice. “I don’t know how to fix this right now, but, in the future… if this ever happens again…”

Morgana is still scrambling for the words to make this better, make it right again somehow and he knows that what he’s got is nowhere near perfect, but it’s all he has. “I don’t want this to happen again! I think… no, I _know_ that I’ve been kind of a pretty bad friend. And I’m sorry that you had to point it out for me to notice. I really mean what I said when I told the team I wanted to stay with you guys forever. And- and that means you, too! You’re my friend too, and I shouldn’t have said that stuff to you, and- and I’m sorry, okay!?”

Silence. There’s some odd mix of confusion and some other, unidentifiable emotion on Ryuji’s face. “...You really mean that. That you think of me as a friend?”

“Yes! I do!” Morgana’s still shaking from panicky raw emotion and it must be showing because Ryuji creases his eyebrows in concern. He crouches down to Morgana’s level.

“Hey. Hey! Morgana, are you alright there?” He asks, resting his hand lightly on Morgana’s back like he wants to help but doesn’t know how.

Morgana shakes his head, like he’s clearing thoughts out. He breathes, shakily. “I’m f-fine! I’m fine. I’m just… this _sucks_.”

“Don’t I know it.” Ryuji mutters as rubs his hands over his face. He sighs like he’s had the wind taken out of his sails. “I’m still mad, you know. Sorry, it’s just- augh, this whole thing is stupid and frustrating. I wish we could pretend it never happened.”

“Yeah.”

They sit there together for a while. Morgana stops shaking, eventually, and he's just left feeling exhausted, like he wants to go to sleep for the next week. He's almost about to doze off when he get an idea. He sits up. “Wait, we _can_ do that though.”

“Huh?” Ryuji looks at him, surprised. “What're you talking about?”

“What you were talking about earlier. Like... pretending that this never happened. We’ve both apologized, so why don’t we both just agree to put this behind us? It’s in the past now, so let’s just leave it there.” Morgana hesitates. “I mean, if that’s fine with you, of course.”

The corner of Ryuji’s mouth twitches upwards. “Hey, I’m down if you’re down.”

Morgana perks up. “Then we have a deal? Hey, as a reward, I’ll even share some of my sushi wi-” Morgana’s eyes widen as he comes to a horrified realization. How had he _forgotten_? “My sushi!”

They both look over at the sushi, scattered forlornly all over the ground. Ryuji rubs the back of his head sheepishly. “Oops. My bad. I guess you didn’t get to eat much of that after all, huh. And for a third time, too... Maybe you’re cursed?”

“What, to never be able to finish a meal of sushi? Now that’s just cruel.” Morgana thinks it over. “Well, it’s not _that_ a big loss. It was kind of bad sushi.”

“You jerk. I bought that with my own money, you know.” Ryuji stands back up and kicks one of the rolls scattered on the ground. “I mean. I guess you aren’t wrong, but still. Ugh, I still haven’t eaten dinner either, I’m starving.”

Morgana hesitates for a second. “... do you want to come to the cafe for Boss’ curry with me?” He tentatively extends the offer, not knowing what kind of result he was hoping for. They just had a huge fight, would this be weird?

Ryuji looks surprised for a brief second, but then he shakes his head and grins. “Nah, I’m gonna head home. I promised Mom I’d be back early today, you know? But hey, if that offer’s still open tomorrow…” he trails off hopefully.

Morgana scoffs playfully, and bats at Ryuji’s legs with one paw. “Don’t push your luck.”

* * *

The two of them walk together to the station. Slowly, cautiously, over the shards of hurts forgiven but not yet forgotten, they talk. About a game that Ryuji finished recently, about a book that Morgana read over Akira’s shoulder…

Silly, inconsequential things. It’s nice.

When Ryuji leaves, Morgana pads his way slowly towards Cafe Leblanc. Akira’s home already, and he glances over as Morgana jumps onto the banister next to the stairs. “Welcome back. Anything interesting happen today?”

Morgana thinks about it, and flicks his tail.

“Yeah. Yeah, something good happened today!”

**Author's Note:**

> to make this a humor fic, replace all of Morgana’s lines with “mrow mrow mrow MROWW” because thats what all the locals were hearing. Just a punk in an empty lot arguing with a cat, nothing to see here~
> 
> Ok but like realtalk this part in the game. this part of the game. oh god why. I think there’s some bad feeling between these two, but they don’t hate each other!!! They need to talk it out and if they can’t do it in game then By Gosh this is what fanfic is for!! Emotionally constipated nimwits, the both of them! I’m not condoning either of these guys right here, they’re both pretty firmly in the wrong! But I want them to be friends again. 
> 
> Also this is me projecting but- i get why ryuji doesnt want to apologize to morgana in mementos. Its just. Being pushed into making an apology like that is kinda an awful feeling, especially when you’re made out to be the only person in the wrong. (And when you consider how he was forced to apologize to Kamoshida after he punched him, i can totally get why Ryuji kinda balk at someone just telling him to go apologize as if it solves the problem to make him take all the blame too) Nevermind that Futaba wasn’t super sensitive either, or that Morgana is really quite disparaging toward Ryuji in the nav voicelines… ryuji’s made out to be the only one to blame, that is a huge hhhhhhhohgod moment for me. I dont think he was right to say that to morgana! but i can totes relate to the feeling of wanting to.


End file.
